Some quick stats from the SXSW Interactive Festival, to give you some idea what it was like:

• Verbal NDA’s given, between Lance and myself: 6
• Movie stars seen: at least 5 that we know of
• Tradeshow schwag items gathered, each: about 500,000
• Tradeshow schwag items that were actually cool: 3
• Best - but least effective - tradeshow schwag item: magnetic buzzing balls handed out by a company whose name I can’t remember
• Internet-related company founders, coders, financers, and top executives seen: hundreds
• Best sessions: Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, talking openly about how the company reached the success it has; Jared Spool, illustrating with magic tricks the importance of illusion and magic in meeting users’ needs; Guy Kawasaki, moderating a panel discussion on social media.
• Lance’s top memories: meeting Guy Kawasaki; dinner at Vespaio; screening “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”.
• My top memories: Seeing Helen Hunt speak; watching the Zappos.com team appear out of nowhere to hand out hundreds of rain ponchos when the weather turned bad
• Minutes of boredom: 0

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Last week my co-author Lance and I attended the Voices That Matter - Web Design conference, a new conference created by Pearson Education (parent company of Peachpit and New Riders Press). As new authors speaking at a brand-new conference, we were doubly unsure what to expect. So what did we find?

A GREAT time, that’s what.

High Points:

1) The cool authors. There were many opportunities to meet and talk with fellow authors, from the first evening’s author get-together, to hallway conversations and presentations, to evening events like the Adobe-sponsored dinner. We met Steve Krug, Kelly Goto, June Cohen, Robert Hoekman, Eric Meyer, Dan Brown, Steve Mulder, Nathan Shedroff, PPK, Charles Wyke-Smith and so many others who’ve influenced us over the years - great fun.

2) I had dinner with Steve Krug! Through a fluke of timing, I ended up going out with a group that included Peachpit Publisher Nancy Ruenzel, Peachpit Senior Acquisitions Editor Michael Nolan, Hannah, a Peachpit Senior Editor, Steve Krug (one of my all-time heroes), and myself. Talk about an unexpected boon! These folks are seriously smart and interesting, so the dinner flew by. Being who I am, I couldn’t resist pitching a new book idea to Michael and Nancy (more on that later, maybe).

3) The great attendees. A great mix of Web design and development professionals, from enterprise-level companies to small companies. I especially remember Jack, who’s working on helping kids with AIDS in Africa (see his site at AfricaJack.org - and please donate if you can). Interesting questions and conversations throughout the event.

4) Our book, on sale for the first time! Yes, this was the first time Lance and I saw our book officially for sale in a physical location. And we even had a few people buy it right there and bring it over to us for autographs, even though it was selling for cheaper on Amazon. Totally cool.

Congrats to the Pearson team for putting together a great conference!